Cold Skies, Keen Perils
by tarysande
Summary: Heroes are made, not born. It's a lesson Shepard learns the hard way. "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer." Ralph Waldo Emerson
1. Chapter 1

_To suffer hardness with good cheer,_

_In sternest school of warfare bred,_

_Our youth should learn; let steed and spear_

_Make him one day the Parthian's dread;_

_Cold skies, keen perils, brace his life._

—Q. Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Odes

John Conington, Ed.

* * *

Beside herself with excitement, Emma Alberts chattered a mile a minute, completely indifferent to Shepard's monosyllabic responses. They stood elbow-to-elbow, using the same small mirror to apply makeup. Shepard was sticking to neutrals: pink lips, brown eyeshadow, mascara. Alberts, on the other hand, had thrown caution to the wind and was going as dramatic as their combined supply of cosmetics would allow. _Gleefully._ And with more fervor than skill, truth be told.

Shepard _wanted_ to be excited. Hell, shore leave was supposed to be fun. Instead, she mostly felt uneasy and kept thinking longingly of the extra rotation she could have (should have?) picked up instead. Quiet guard duty had to be better than drinking bad beer and avoiding a friend who, rumor had it, wanted to take things into _more than friends_ territory. Ugh. The last thing she wanted was to spend her first night on shore leave, on _Elysium_ of all places, tiptoeing around Paul Graves' hurt feelings. Because his hurt feelings were inevitable. She wasn't interested. He was either oblivious or stupid or, worse, thought enough persistence might change her mind. Hints sure weren't doing the trick. The next step was brutal honesty. _Fantastic_. She sighed, twisting her hair and automatically starting to pull the weight of it up into the regulation bun she usually wore.

Alberts glowered at her in the mirror and turned, slapping Shepard's hands away hard enough to sting. "No! God, Shepard, you are doing this _all_ wrong. We're not on duty, remember? Hair like that deserves to be _seen_." Alberts fluffed out her own shoulder-length blonde curls as if to prove her point, before reaching for the brush and tossing it Shepard's way, all in one swift motion.

Shepard, reflexes honed by training and aptitude no one had quite expected of her, grabbed it out of the air and gave it an acrobatic flip before dragging it through the red hair falling in waves past her waist. "It'll be too hot for dancing," Shepard protested. A token protest, really; she didn't remember the last time she'd left her hair loose. It felt soft and lovely against her arms and the skin the cut of her dress left bare at her waist.

It was the exact _opposite _of the dress she'd been meant to wear to her eighteenth birthday party. She shuddered at the memory of it. That one had been floaty and virginal and white and had probably cost her foster mother at least three months of a Systems Alliance 2nd Lieutenant's salary. This one had cost a week's salary (still an extravagance); was short, tight and a vibrant green that brought out the complementary tinge in her grey-green eyes; and left an amount of skin bare that her foster mother would have sniffed at and declared 'unsightly' before sending her immediately to her room to change.

_Unsightly_ was the very worst of insults in her foster mother's eyes. It covered any manner of sins, all of them unforgivable.

Shepard hitched her skirt a couple of inches higher, to spite the woman she hadn't seen in four years and intended—if she had her way—never to see again. No matter how many guilt-inducing letters were sent. No matter how much blood money was forwarded on credit chits wrapped within those letters.

If she hadn't thought the price too high, Shepard would have spent the whole small fortune on an increasingly _unsightly_ wardrobe. And then had compromising photographs of herself taken, from one end of the galaxy to the other. She wondered how bad they'd have to be, to make the letters stop, and whether the letters would end before her commission was taken and she was asked to leave the military. Or given a dishonorable discharge. So, instead, she donated the money to charitable causes. Usually ones her foster parents would _never_ have chosen to support themselves.

Strange, when she realized twice as many years had passed as she'd spent with them in the first place. Hate could burn a long time when it had fuel enough. _Find another Mindoir orphan to be your political pawn, lady. This one's got different plans._

Alberts, oblivious to the dark turn of Shepard's thoughts, only rolled her kohl-lined eyes and swiped rose-pink blush over her cheeks. "I thought you didn't dance."

"Maybe I will."

Alberts jabbed her makeup brush in Shepard's direction, the pointy end extended like a weapon, though she stopped short of actually poking her with it. "You mean maybe you'll sit in a dark corner avoiding Graves and making moon-eyes at Smith. Alex, not Jillian." She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. "Unless there's something I don't know…?"

Shepard made a face that couldn't, by _anyone's definition_, have been called _moon-eyes._ "I do not moon. I—okay, maybe there's a little bit of healthy _admiring_ of Alex Smith_,_ but admiring is not mooning. At all."

"Ooh, Alex," Alberts simpered, doing an unbearably bad impression of Shepard's voice. At least two octaves higher than reality. "You're so good with your gun, Alex. Watch me pretend you're the second coming of Christ even though we all know I have twice the commendations you do. Ooh, Alex, what strong hands you have."

"Shut up."

Alberts snickered, and her voice dropped back to its usual register. "I see you're not bothering to deny it."

Shepard stole the makeup and added a little color to her own cheeks. _Not_ because of Alex Smith. She just… looked a little pale. Not much opportunity for sun on a space rotation, and she didn't have Alberts' natural swarthiness. Alberts' snicker became a full fledged laugh, and Shepard took the moment of distraction to throw a powder puff in the other girl's face before running off, cackling, as fast as her very short, very tight dress allowed.

"This means _war_, Shepard!" Alberts shouted.

"Only if you catch me," Shepard taunted back.

"War! Full-scale! No holds barred!"

Shepard laughed. "You sure about that, Alberts? Because I'm prepared to walk out the door this second, and I've got your shoes. So I'm pretty sure I'd win."

After a long pause, Alberts appeared in the doorway, glowering, the excess powder no longer in evidence. "Fine," she said, holding her hands up in mock surrender. "Temporary ceasefire. Tonight, drinking. Tomorrow, war."

#

"Shepard? Lieutenant, we're going to need you to put that gun down."

Though she could hear the words, and even mostly understand them, her ears still rang from the blast. This one had been so much closer than the first. It seemed selfish to hope it wasn't gone for good, given how many others had lost so much more. What was hearing to a goddamned limb? What was hearing compared to a _life_? She blinked, shaking her head as if shaking might help the cloudiness clear. It didn't.

"You are Shepard, aren't you? Lieutenant Shepard?"

The voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away, echoing strangely in her head. Her hands ached and trembled, and she clutched the pistol tighter, afraid of dropping it. A good soldier didn't drop her weapon. Not for anything. Not for anyone. Even when her hands were swiftly going numb.

She was pretty sure the warmth trickling down her face was some unholy blend of sweat and tears and blood, all mixed with the makeup she'd put on earlier. That Alberts had _forced_ her to put on.

Alberts.

Poor Alberts.

At least she wasn't crying anymore.

Shepard hoped the civilians got out okay. Rebecca Milton. Doc Ribinski. Mary; Mary had to have survived. Mary had probably saved just as many lives as Doc Ribinski by making sure everyone got regular hydration. Her voice, soft counterpart to the shelling and gunshots, had risen to every challenge, telling them stories about growing up on Earth, keeping them distracted in the best kind of way. _Bluest sky you ever saw. Golden wheat undulating under that sky like a sea of gold. Birds singing. My loves, you can't imagine how much I miss hearing birdsong. There you go, my boy, have some water. Pretend it doesn't taste of ashes, there's a good lad._

Lily. Shepard's gut twisted and she swallowed the rising nausea. What had she been thinking? She should've sent the kid away at the very first chance. You didn't let a teenaged girl wander around a goddamned battlefield, no matter how shorthanded you were. _Another bad call, Shepard._ She really hoped she wouldn't have to see Lily's dark eyes empty, Lily's full lips slack.

Better than if the batarians had taken her, though. Better death than that. Shepard knew that much, remembered that much.

Shepard tried to breathe in, but the smoke still burned her lungs and she managed only to make herself cough. Eyes watering, she kept her gun trained on the direction of the voices. _Aim for the eyes_, she thought. _Batarians have four. Good chance of hitting one of them. Aim for the eyes._

"Lieutenant? Can you hear me, Lieutenant Shepard? Nod once for yes."

She nodded. Once. Even though she could really only make out one word of every three.

"Good. Good. I'm Commander Kildare. Brendan Kildare, Alliance Navy. I serve on the SSV_ Agincourt_."

_Don't talk, Commander. The batarians are coming. Aim for the eyes. Batarians have four. Kill or be killed. Worse. That's what I learned on Mindoir._

She couldn't find her voice. Her throat was too raw. Burned, maybe. Messed up hearing and no voice. No medi-gel in the dress she'd worn to the club. Maybe Alberts wouldn't have lost her leg, if she'd been in a hardsuit. Maybe she wouldn't have died.

Oh, God. The crying. She couldn't get the crying out of her head.

Commander Kildare took another step closer, his hands raised, his eyes wary. She recognized wariness when she saw it. Two eyes. Just two. Hazel. Alliance gear. A pair of Alliance grunts stood behind him, their Alliance-issue guns still fixed on her. _I'm not the threat, you assholes. _"The fighting's over. It's over, LT. You're safe. Lower your weapon, Lieutenant Shepard. That's an order."

She wanted to. All her training screamed at her to do as the commander bade. But her arms remained locked, her finger a breath away from the trigger, her ragged breaths closer to sobs.

_Aim for the eyes. There are worse things than dying, Shepard. There are worse things than dying. You know that better than anyone. Aim for the eyes._


	2. Chapter 2

Shepard raised the bottle to her lips, took a long pull, and immediately regretted it.

Warm beer was an abomination. A blight. An insult to alcoholic beverages everywhere. And yet Shepard, who generally had only the highest respect for beer, had been nursing the same bottle for better than an hour, letting the once ice-cold beverage go to lukewarm waste. After they'd finished their rounds of toasts, she just hadn't much felt like drinking the rest.

She glanced at the clock over the bar for the eighth time in the last fifteen minutes. Still not midnight. She told herself midnight was the minimum acceptable hour to leave, though she knew Alberts would still glare disapprovingly. Maybe she could slip away without Alberts seeing; the blonde hadn't left the dance floor in an hour, and was currently swaying back and forth in the arms of a man whose cheekbones were so chiseled Shepard could actually make them out from across the room, even in the near-dark. Excellent, as far as distractions went.

At one minute after midnight, Shepard hoisted herself to her feet, wobbling on her uncomfortable heels. She wanted combat boots; she wanted fatigues. She wanted her too-warm hair off the back of her neck. She wanted bed. Tomorrow she'd ask around, see if she couldn't pick up an extra shift. She didn't have another day of shopping in her. She definitely didn't have another night of not-drinking and not-dancing and definitely-not-watching-Alex-Smith-making-out-with -a-pretty-local-girl. That the girl was a redhead only added insult to already significant injury. Her gaze slipped to the other end of the bar, where Graves watched her with exactly the hurt feelings she'd anticipated. When he caught her eye, she was the first to look away.

She took a step toward the door and the world fell apart.

At first, she thought it was only the beer, though it had been a long time since a beer and a half had affected her at all, let alone inducing intoxication enough to send her sprawling on her ass. Then she thought maybe someone had put something _into_ that beer, because a couple of drinks shouldn't have made the ground shake. A moment later, though, she realized the ringing in her ears didn't have anything to do with alcohol, and the smoke and ash in the air _definitely_ wasn't an alcohol-induced hallucination. She scrambled to her feet, swaying on her stupid, impractical shoes.

The end of the bar where Graves and Kho had been sitting, the booth where Alex Smith had been making out with the redheaded local girl, the whole _far side of the building_ was gone. Flattened. _Cratered. _Shepard knew she shouldn't have been able to see sky. She blinked, but the stars remained, blanketed by a fog of smoke. Her eyes burned, and a trickle of something warm ran down her right cheek; when she swiped it away, her hand came away stained with blood. Her shoes lasted less than a minute before she decided she'd take her chances with bare feet and kicked them off.

She only realized her hearing had been knocked out when it started to come back again, and the first thing she heard were the screams. She stumbled toward the place the dance floor had been, stopping to check pulses. Too few pulses. She found Jillian Smith crumpled under a fallen beam of lights. She didn't need to look for a pulse there; people didn't survive their brains being smashed in. Shepard swallowed her nausea. _Later. Later. Triage now. Mourn later. Later._

With her hearing returning to normal, she heard the sound of other explosions, some distant, some near. Elysium was in the Verge, sure, but it was supposed to be safe. She choked on the memory of the night six years previous—_blood and fire and blood and her parents and a kitchen knife stuck in an alien chest and yellow paint bubbling and peeling and skin bubbling and peeling and so much blood_—and focused instead on the people she could help, the injuries she could treat. She wasn't that girl anymore. She wasn't that girl. She had resources. She had skills.

She wished she had medi-gel.

She wished she had a goddamned gun.

Alberts was alive when Shepard found her. Tears had made a ruin of the kohl, leaving dark tracks down cheeks that needed no blush to look pink now. The bright red lipstick she'd been wearing was now smeared all over the lips of the young man upon whom she was performing desperate and futile CPR. "Shepard!" Alberts cried, over-loud in the way that told Shepard the other woman's hearing wasn't normal either. "Take over the chest compressions."

Shepard shook her head. She'd triaged enough injured—and left enough corpses behind her—to know this man with his pretty cheekbones and full lips fell into the latter camp. "Alberts," she shouted back. "We have to go! We have to get out of here!"

"No way!" Alberts bent her head and blew another ineffectual breath into the dead man's lungs. When she lifted her face, fresh black streaks marred her cheeks. "No fucking way! We gotta help these people, Shep, we gotta _save_ these people!"

Shepard grabbed her friend by the shoulders, shaking her once, hard. "Private Alberts, listen to me! Graves, Koh, both Smiths, Masaka? They're dead. We are under attack! Do you understand? We are Alliance Fucking Navy, and we have a responsibility to the living, not the dead. And that's a goddamned order, if you need it to be!"

As if to punctuate her point, another rumbling explosion sounded in the distance. Toward base, Shepard thought. No. _Past_ the base. Alberts began to protest, but Shepard shook her head, gesturing for silence. Past the screams, past the moans, past the sound of gunfire and military ordnance being brought to bear, she heard more shelling.

"Can't you hear it?" Shepard asked. "Listen! Can't you hear what they're doing?"

"I hear a fuck-ton of bombs going off while we sit here letting people die, Lieutenant."

But Shepard shook her head, ignoring the little jab of Alberts referring to rank—she'd started it, after all—and raising the interface of her omni-tool. Alberts looked even more garish in the orange light; it highlighted every haunted line and shadow. It didn't take long for Shepard to ascertain communications were down all over the place, but even without a commlink or extranet access she was able to bring up the local map she'd downloaded before landing, when she'd thought shore leave would involve a lot more wandering around and a lot less bombing. It showed a 3-D view of Illyria. A detailed 3-D view. The only thing the virtual city was missing was the people.

"Look," Shepard said, ignoring the sound of another nearby explosion, "look _close._ See this? This is us. And that's Alliance HQ." She pointed a line of dots heading toward the north side of the city. "That's the sound of shells. You ever read fairy tales, Alberts? It's Hansel and fucking Gretel. Breadcrumbs."

"But who?" Alberts protested. "And _why_?"

"It has to be the batarians," Shepard said, trying and mostly failing to keep the poison of distaste from her tone. "I'd stake every credit to my name on it being the batarians. They're pissed humanity's moved into the Verge; they're pissed we've been shitting on their slavery and piracy parade. But this… full-on assault? This isn't how pirates and slavers fight."

"Maybe if you get enough of them together…"

"Someone in Intelligence dropped the fucking ball if they managed to spring this kind of attack on _Elysium_ without anyone knowing. Talk about getting caught with your damned pants down." Shepard grimaced. "Still. The Alliance has better people, with better training. Better weapons. Right now? All that goddamned training is saying one thing, right? What's your training saying, Alberts?"

"Head back to base, grab my gear, join the fucking fight and give the four-eyed bastards hell."

Shepard's lips twisted, bitter and unhappy, while half a dozen other scenarios played out in her head. None of them particularly good. All of them involved a lot of corpses. Human ones, mostly. "Exactly."

"So let's go. Let's do it."

"No," Shepard said. "We have to go the other way." She pointed out a nondescript little gate into the city on her three-dimensional map. It looked small and sad, mostly reserved for foot traffic, easy to ignore. Most people wouldn't give it a thought; Shepard only knew about it because she had a real knack for finding multiple escape routes. After Mindoir. After everything. Her instructors said it was a talent; Shepard knew it was actually scar tissue, but at least it was occasionally useful. "See that?"

"It's nothing," Alberts said. "Doesn't even look wide enough to drive a car through, let alone a military vehicle."

"Right," Shepard agreed. "It's like… it's like a service entrance. To the city. And they're going to flank from here. They're going to send a flood of assassins in behind us, and crush us between the expected force and the unexpected one." Shepard pinched her free hand like a crab's claw closing. "The Alliance can hold against one army, Alberts, but they won't be protecting their backs if they're worried about what's happening in front of them. And by the sound of those explosions, these hostiles are proving very, very distracting."

Somehow Alberts managed to look both baffled and horrified. The orange glow of the omni-tool didn't help. "How do you know that's what they're planning? How can you be sure?"

"Because," Shepard said grimly. "It's exactly what I would do, if I wanted to win against someone bigger, stronger, and better trained than me."

_And because batarian slavers don't fight fair, kid. They wait until you're sleeping. They wait until everyone's safe and snug in their warm little houses. They burn the whole world down and hunt the young ones, the pretty ones, the useful ones when they have the nerve to run away. And you don't want to think about what happens to those kids, Alberts. There are some things worse than dying._

Shepard's hand closed into a tight fist.

"So… so we head back to base, let Commander Vale make the call, or, or—"

"No time. The commander might already be dead, or he might be headed with the rest of the unit toward what they think is the front. We're closer to the gate than we are to base; they might already be through by the time reinforcements arrive. _If_ the Alliance even has reinforcements to spare." Shepard shook her head. "It's on us. It's a small gate, like you said. I think we can hold it."

Alberts' eyes widened. "Without guns? Without gear? Without _reinforcements_? It's… fuck, Shepard, it's _suicide_."

Shepard got to her feet, trying and failing to send a message to HQ. "Maybe. I won't order you to come with me, Alberts, but I know where I'm going."

Shepard made it three steps before Alberts fell in line at her side.

#

Even before she opened her eyes, she knew she was in a hospital. They had a smell. They had a taste, like metal at the back of her throat, that made her swallow again and again even though swallowing brought no relief. The air was too dry, like hospital air. Hospitals definitely had a sound, beeps and whirrs chittering away like aliens speaking languages her universal translator was hopeless to translate. This room, while definitely belonging to a hospital, was quieter. Instead of wheezing, moaning, moping roommates, only the sound of her own breath, her own monitors, her own heartbeat kept her company.

She found the relative silence oddly unsettling. If she were in the military hospital, she'd never have been given a private room. Private rooms were for the wealthy, the powerful; private rooms were for the girl her foster parents had wanted her to be. She swallowed again, harder, but the bitter hospital taste only grew stronger. She fought the urge to gag.

She didn't remember getting here. She remembered the explosion. She vaguely remembered Commander Kildare trying to tell her she was safe.

She remembered not believing him.

Had she—had she _shot_ someone?

Had someone shot _her?_

Eyes still closed, she wiggled her feet beneath the blankets and found them swathed in bandages. To be expected, really, after running halfway across Illyria in bare feet. At least they were both still attached. Again she had to swallow the urge to vomit. _Later. Later._

_Isn't it later _now_?_

She wriggled her fingers next, and found them all responsive. Good sign. Her neck was stiff when she rolled it from side to side, but otherwise undamaged. That she could hear the various murmuring machines meant her hearing had come back.

On a deep breath, she cracked her eyes open. Her own face looked back at her, and that breath caught. One of the machines started beeping at a more rapid pace. On the silent vidscreen opposite her bed, her face hovered next to the right of a serious-faced reporter. It was the formal shot they'd taken after she made 2nd Lieutenant; they must've pilfered it from the Alliance files. She looked a little proud, a little shell-shocked, a lot out of her depth.

_Although many mysteries about the attack on Elysium remain, sources unanimously agree the victory hinged on the efforts of a Systems Alliance Marine visiting the city of Illyria on leave, Lieutenant—_

She closed her eyes again, counting to a hundred slowly and willing her heartbeat to calm the _fuck down_.It wasn't better in the dark behind her eyelids; she kept seeing the rain of burning meteors, she kept hearing Alberts crying, kept seeing teenaged Lily with her trembling hands clenched around a gun it looked all wrong for her to be carrying. Shepard's hands closed at her sides, blunt nails digging into the soft sheets. Too soft. Sheets in a military hospital wouldn't have been so soft. _Sources unanimously agree._ She'd held on until the last possible minute, the last possible second, waiting for rescue, waiting for reinforcements, hoping she wouldn't have to pin all the city's hopes on a bomb held together with hope and prayers and her own by-no-means-certain technical ability when it came to explosives.

Even though she knew she was safe—white walls, white room, low murmur of white noise—the memory stirred the same old terror, only this time instead of seeing a knife sticking out of her father's chest, Shepard saw two pieces of Emma Alberts flying in different directions amidst a hail of molten debris. She saw her own hands shaking as they typed the detonation code into her omni-tool, buying Lieutenant Brunet as much time as possible to evacuate the civilians. The batarian tilting his head at her, baring his neck in insult. That goddamned batarian's face—

The sound of the door whooshing open stopped the panicking spiral, replacing screams with brisk footsteps and the smell of smoke with antiseptic hand lotion and the faint scent of shampoo.

Her damned picture was _still_ on the vidscreen as her eyes slid past.

She calmed as the nurse approached, at least enough to take three good breaths without the hiccup of panic arresting them at the apex. Shepard didn't need to see the woman's identification to know exactly who she was. Even with her hair pulled up in a bun, the dark eyes and the shape of the face were unmistakably similar to Lily's. _"I can help," the girl said, so earnest, so damned brave. "My mom's a nurse." _Shepard's lips tried to curve into a smile, but she winced when the dry skin cracked and began to bleed. Swallowing past the dryness, the memory of panic, she tried and failed to lever herself into a more upright position.

"Whoa," the nurse said, crossing the room at a jog and settling a gentle hand against Shepard's shoulder. "That's quite enough of that." She smiled when Shepard reluctantly subsided, settling into her pillow. "Better. You're safe. A little beat up, but safe. Take a deep breath, Lieutenant; the doctor's on his way."

Shepard breathed.

"Good. Very good. How about another just like that?"

Shepard breathed. Then she croaked, "You're Lily's mom." She cringed at the sound of her own voice; it was almost as alien to her ears as the language the machines spoke.

The nurse chuckled. "I do go by other names. Katie's the most common. Katie Keane. Though I am, in fact, Lily's mom. And very proud of it."

"She…" Shepard coughed, frowned, took another determined swallow, and said, "She looks just like you."

"And she speaks very highly of you." A ghost of distress flitted behind the other woman's eyes, so swift Shepard almost missed it.

As Katie reached to adjust something on one of the chirping machines, Shepard touched her forearm lightly. Katie's skin felt very warm under her cold fingertips. "Sorry," Shepard said. "I should've—she wanted to help. But I should've sent her away."

"She wouldn't have thanked you for it," Katie said, smiling softly. It was, Shepard realized, the look of a mother realizing that somehow her baby had grown up without her permission. Or certainly without her being ready for it. Had her own mother even had a chance to wear that look? Strange, to think of it now. Shepard told herself the burn in her eyes was due to the brightness of the light, and focused instead on what Katie was saying. "She says she's going to join the Alliance when she's old enough."

"Oh," Shepard said. "I—sorry. I feel like I should apologize for that, too."

Katie laughed and shook her head. "Only a little of the blame falls on you." Her bright expression sobered. "Her father… he served. And was lost to pirates. Happens more than it should, out here. Her grandfather fought in the First Contact War, near the end of his career. You're only the latest hero in her eyes to wear that uniform." She checked the various blinking, beeping monitors. "Better. Give me another of those big breaths." When Shepard obliged, Katie tilted a wry smile her way and added, "Granted, you're the first to treat her like it's a uniform she might be worthy of one day."

"She is. No question. But I'm… I'm not a hero."

Katie's expression shifted toward the dubious, and against her better judgement, Shepard's gaze slipped past the nurse back to the vidscreen. At least her picture was gone, though only because they'd shifted to a live report; Shepard recognized the facade of Alliance HQ, even as smudged with smoke and pockmarked with damage as it was. A reporter spoke earnestly with an officer she didn't recognize. The closed captioning said he'd been aboard the _Agincourt._ She squinted, and then winced again, because the uniform didn't lie: he was a _rear admiral._ The Alliance must be up to their damned eyeballs in fallout if they were getting admirals to control this story's spin.

The sinking feeling wasn't entirely due to hospitalization or hunger or post traumatic stress.

They kept showing _her_ picture.

_Sources unanimously agree._

"You want me to turn the sound up?" Katie asked.

"No!" It came out too sharp, too high-pitched. It gave too much away. Shepard grimaced. "I'd like you to turn it off completely, if you don't mind."

"Turning it off won't change what they're saying about you," Katie warned, not without sympathy, though she did switch off the vidscreen. The blank black eye glared at Shepard, disapproving. It accused her of cowardice. She ignored it. "My daughter's not the only one who thinks you're a hero."

"I'm just a soldier," Shepard insisted. Her stiff neck protested as she shook her head. "I was just doing my job."

"Well, soldier, you and I both know it's better to have all the information available." She tilted her head. "Otherwise they'll be able to ambush you."

Shepard pursed her dry lips. At least they weren't bleeding anymore. The faint metallic taste of blood lingered on her tongue. "I… take your point. Maybe…"

"On with no sound?"

Shepard hesitated, but nodded all the same. The vidscreen flickered back to life. They were still talking to the rear admiral. He had an excellent 'this is very serious, but we have it all under control' expression. Shepard wondered if that was the real reason they'd chosen him as the face to deal with the fallout.

She didn't want to think about the other faces they were assigning roles to. _Sources unanimously agree…_

"I'll be back in a minute with some ice chips for that throat. The doctor'll be in right away." Katie paused at the threshold, her hand hovering just above the door's panel. "You ever heard that quote about heroes, Lieutenant Shepard? It goes something like a hero's not braver than an ordinary man. He—or she—is just brave five minutes longer." The dark eyes were serious, so serious, and bright with unshed tears. "Thank you, Lieutenant—for my sake, for my daughter's—for hanging on that five minutes more."

The door swished shut before Shepard found words.

"I wanted some goddamned revenge," Shepard said into the silent room, while the vidscreen flashed her photo again. "Alberts was a hero."

The silent kind. The kind that didn't get mentioned on the newsvids. The kind whose medals were all posthumous.


	3. Chapter 3

They ran into the marines halfway to their destination. Shepard almost wept with relief. She'd been analyzing tactics since she left the club, and although she hadn't wanted to speak her concerns to Alberts, she'd been coming up with precisely _nothing_. It was damned hard to make plans when you were two unarmed soldiers in unfamiliar territory fighting against a dishonorable enemy, and she didn't think polite diplomacy was, in this situation, going to do the trick.

Marines, though. She could work with marines.

A swift glance told her the highest ranking officer was a 1st Lieutenant, and either they'd lost men on the way, or they'd never been a complete unit in the first place, as only half a dozen other soldiers stood arrayed behind him, looking anxious to be on their way. She'd have liked several times as many, but half a dozen was better than nothing, and they were exceptionally well-armed. Most were carrying at least a full complement of weapons; a couple carried extras. From the fallen, perhaps. Her fingers itched to have a pistol in hand; her spine longed for the familiar weight of a sniper rifle pressed against it. With enough ammo and a good perch, she could take out a hundred batarians. A thousand. Right between their four damned eyes. _Bang. Bang. Bang._

Shepard tried not to imagine the picture she and Alberts made: disheveled girls, barefoot, grime-streaked, still in their dancing clothes, unarmed and with nothing obviously identifying them as Alliance, though her tags, at least, still hung around her neck.

The lieutenant paused, taking them in. "It's not safe out here, ladies," he said. "You should find shelter. The Alliance has this under con—"

"We're Alliance," Shepard replied briskly, as if she were wearing her crispest dress blues and not a too-short, too-tight dress that had once been green and not stiff and dark with dried blood. _Later. Later._ "I'm Lieutenant Shepard; this is Private Alberts. Sir, we need you and your men."

He blinked at her. Off in the distance they'd run from, the sound of another explosion rumbled. Above them a few small ships flew circles around each other, guns spitting out streaks of fire, the sound almost comical, like something out of a vid. "Pardon me?" he asked, with the polite bafflement of a man who'd just had a stranger bowl into him on the street only to act as though the mishap was his fault.

"I know it's irregular in every sense of the word," Shepard said. "Come with me, and I'll explain. At most you lose five minutes. But if I'm right, you'll help save thousands of lives. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Maybe the whole damned city, Lieutenant."

He was a pay grade above her, she wasn't even in uniform, and yet the man hardly hesitated before saying, "Yes, ma'am," and falling in beside her.

She pulled up the map on her omni-tool again, and they walked as quickly as her need to talk would allow. After a minute, he reached for his heavy backup pistol and handed it to her. Relief washed over her, a palpable wave, followed by a giddy sensation of _maybe, just maybe this'll work._ When she'd finished laying out her plan—her skeleton of a plan, her barest of bare bones of a plan—and the reasoning behind it, he stopped and bowed his head. She couldn't see his face; couldn't read what was going on. Shepard tried not to shift her weight, standing at tense parade rest until he lifted his head.

"Lieutenant Shepard's got intel that could save a lot of lives," he said. The words were quiet, but his voice carried. "She's running this op from here on out. Anyone with a problem can head to HQ."

No one left. As they jogged toward the gate, Shepard fell in with each, committing their names to memory. She liked to know her people. Names weren't much, but they were something. The Lieutenant was Brunet.

_Brunet,_ she thought, using the names to distract her from the pain in her feet. _Alberts. Kwan. Schiffler. Herder. Findley. Domarski. Mehra._

The names of the dead—_Graves, Masaka, Koh, both Smiths_—ran a bitter counterpart, but they were important, so she held on to them, too. _Later. Later._

#

Mere hours after she woke in her solitary hospital room, Shepard heard the door open and instead of yet another doctor or the more welcome face of Katie Keane, two Alliance guards walked in, flanking the same rear admiral she'd seen speaking to the reporter on the vidscreen. She nearly broke a leg in her haste to rise from her bed, only to be waved back to her pillows before she could do more than sort out the various (and unnecessary, in her opinion) lines tethering her to her machinery.

The tall, greying man wore his uniform like he was born to it. He came to a stop at the foot of her bed, hands linked loosely behind his back. It was, she suspected, the kind of posture designed to put others at ease, all the better for him to observe them. She sat up straighter against the raised bed, longing for a costume other than her current hospital gown and bandages of various shapes and sizes. The role of invalid was always one she played exceptionally poorly, and her discomfort was only magnified at being seen so diminished by someone of such stature.

"To what do I owe the honor, sir?" she asked, already putting various puzzle pieces together and already dreading the picture she feared they made.

His gaze found hers, direct and unflinching. "We need you, Lieutenant Shepard."

"I—" she bit off the protest, swallowed it, and lifted her chin resolutely. "What do you need me to do, sir?"

"You're to be awarded the Star of Terra for your actions above and beyond the call of duty here on Elysium, Lieutenant. We ask that you accept it."

"Sir," she began, this time not quite able to keep the objection from her tone. Her vague wave took in the vidscreen. "It's not—it's not like they say it was. I didn't… single-handedly hold the batarians off and seal a breach. I certainly didn't kill a hundred enemies armed only with a pistol. I wasn't alone, sir, except at the very end, and then only because I sent the others away to protect the civilians."

_And because I didn't want anyone else caught in the blast radius._

"Indeed," he said, his smile pulling at the scar that cut across his face. On someone else it might've been disfiguring; on him it was distinguished. She wondered, a little, where he'd gotten it. And how. And why he'd never had it surgically smoothed. Maybe it was part of his costume. She could understand that. It served him much better than her drab hospital gown served her. "But I expect you and I both know the power of a story, don't we?"

She lowered her eyes. "I'm not a story, either, sir. Begging your pardon."

He didn't look bothered. She suspected he made a habit of not looking bothered. "Perhaps not, Lieutenant, but I've debriefed the team you had with you at the gate. It's not a false honor we're bestowing here."

Shepard's lips compressed; she ignored the sharp pain of their dryness cracking again. "And Lieutenant Brunet told you everything, sir? He told you about Alberts? He… he told you about the batarian prisoner?"

"The lieutenant's report was very thorough. We took everything under advisement, but the decision's been made." He cleared his throat a little uncomfortably. "And I'm afraid I have you at a disadvantage. Allow me to correct that. I'm Rear Admiral Steven Hackett, currently with the First Fleet."

"Oh," she said, the syllable startled from her as she recognized the name. "They, uh, speak very highly of you, sir. You rose from enlistment. You're an inspiration."

"You see? Stories. They precede us, they follow us." His smile remained calculated, and didn't quite touch his eyes. "They don't talk about the hard work and determination necessary to elevate a person from mediocrity to renown, and they only talk about suffering when it's part of a good myth. As you well know. I believe you're only at the beginning of a rise that could put my own to shame."

She shook her head, but couldn't actually bring herself to argue with him. The Star of Terra. The _fucking _Star of _Terra. _The words were hard as swallowed seeds in her belly, and she didn't know what would grow if she left them there.

"Your dossier says you've a gift for tactical analysis. What's your take on this situation?"

He spoke the question casually, and yet she felt certain it was a kind of test. One whose parameters she didn't know; one she couldn't ace by studying hard or observing closely or even by cheating.

She couldn't have said why, given that she'd known him less than a quarter of an hour, but she didn't want to see the curve of that faint smile turn downward, didn't want to see his brow furrow above those cool eyes. She didn't want to disappoint him. It was a test she didn't want to fail.

So she tried to consider things from his perspective, from the Alliance's perspective. She imagined what it must look like in some Command boardroom right now, all pointed fingers and accusations that would never, ever make it outside that highest level need-to-know more-classified-than-God's-first-name brainstorming session.

At least they'd gotten a victory.

Command could do a lot with a victory.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Lieutenant." Here the smile did warm his eyes a little, but for some reason it only made her more watchful, more careful. His posture, his body language, the blandness of his expression all seemed calculated to project authority and ease, but something about his eyes, and the twitch of his brow told her how absolutely he'd meant the words _we need you._ He might have the rank, but he'd given her a kind of power with those words, and he was trusting her not to abuse it. The very thought made her lightheaded.

"The Alliance is basically looking at a category five shitstorm, here, and they're stuck playing damage control. A hub as big and vital as Elysium shouldn't have been hit like this. It's not a backwater like Mindoir. The attack wasn't random, or sudden, or spur of the moment, not by a long shot. No way. Not with the amount of force they were able to bring to bear. It was _planned._ And planned well." She coughed, and the dryness of her throat forced her to pause and take a sip of the water on her bedside table. The vidscreen behind Rear Admiral Hackett was repeating the earlier story for the fifteenth time. She was so damned sick of her own smiling face. "Either someone screwed the pooch by ignoring or dismissing vital intel, or, worse, someone _leaked_ intelligence while keeping the batarians' intentions hidden. Or both, to varying degrees."

"We have people investigating all possible avenues, yes. Mistakes were made. Examples must follow. But that's the long game. In the meantime?"

She bit the side of her tongue because what she really wanted to say was something petulant like _please don't make me do it._ The pain reminded her what the attack had cost. The lives she knew about; the ones she didn't. The things that would never be the same. "A hero makes a good story while you search for the villain. I was in the right place at the right time. I've already got a story that'll engender trust and sympathy; everyone loves a plucky orphan who manages to overcome the deck stacked against her. Essentially you want to use me as the feel-good distraction." She sighed. "But I'm good with intel, sir. I'd be a better asset on your investigative team."

He chuckled. "And while we appreciate the enthusiasm, Lieutenant, you've got nowhere _near_ the security clearance. Yet. Give it a decade. I don't doubt you'll have a long and illustrious career hunting down bastards at least as villainous as the mastermind behind this mess."

"Sir," she said, "I'm a sniper, an infiltrator. I can't do the job I trained for—" _the job I love_ "—if every vidscreen from here to Earth and back is showing my face at five minutes past the hour every hour."

"You'll adapt," he insisted. She blinked at the distinct lack of sympathy. "You've already amassed a handful of commendations for your work, Lieutenant. Treat this like another op. Visibility can be an asset, too. Hell, you might even be grateful for it, one day."

"Only if I go into politics, sir. And I think that is something I can safely assure you I will never do."

"Ahh," he said, smiling the first smile of the conversation she would have unreservedly called genuine. "Terrible word, never. It begs to be contradicted. I could recite a list of things I insisted I never wanted when I was your age, Shepard. And then I could tell you how many of those nevers have shaped my current position." His smile became a soft laugh, and she found herself joining in, almost in spite of herself. A moment later, Rear Admiral Hackett stuck out a hand. Startled, Shepard accepted it, and he shook it once, firm but not too firm. His eyes never left hers. "You are a credit to the uniform, Lieutenant, and the Alliance thanks you for your service. I don't mind admitting that I expect great things from you."

She bowed her head as her cheeks warmed with a blush of pride she couldn't quite smother. "Sir. Yes, sir. I won't let you down."

_Just another op_, she thought, once Rear Admiral Hackett and his entourage left. Lieutenant Shepard on the vidscreen smiled at her pleasantly. _Just another role. _She snorted. _Deep cover war hero. Lifelong commitment, though, whether you want it or not. _

When Katie Keane walked in a moment later and found Shepard laughing to herself she asked what was so funny, but Shepard only laughed harder, and couldn't find the words to explain.


	4. Chapter 4

There were civilians at the gate.

Even though Shepard had known the area was a residential one, somehow she hadn't anticipated civilian… interference? Help? And yet here they were, about a dozen of them ranging in age from a girl in her teens to a woman who looked entirely too elderly to be pushing such a large, obviously heavy crate all by herself, all scurrying about. After a moment of observation, the chaos settled into a pattern, and Shepard realized most were involved in the building of a barricade. A pair of armed guards stood watch, one with his eyes over the wall, and the other looking back, toward them. The fortification looked impressively sturdy given that it appeared to be predominantly made of furniture and scavenged building materials. And someone's skycar, if she wasn't mistaken. One of the guards gave a low whistle as the marines approached, and a tall, silver-haired woman with a coat thrown over her nightdress separated herself from the group and came forward to greet them.

"About time you got here," she snapped, British accent crisp, and tone ferocious. Her gaze swept over them, sharp and demanding as any drill sergeant Shepard had ever met. Shepard found herself curbing the instinct to salute and shout _ma'am, yes, ma'am _before dropping to give her twenty. "But, good Lord, where are the rest of you? This won't do at all."

Shepard waited for Brunet to take the lead before remembering he'd given her the command and this moment was the first real test of it. It was one thing to convince a fellow soldier; this was something else entirely. A prickle of anxiety made her palms sweat, and she linked her hands behind her back because she had the idea it might look more professional than dragging her moist palms down her thighs. "Ma'am," she said, trying and mostly succeeding to iron the hesitation from her tone. "I'm Lieutenant Shep—"

"Lieutenant? But you're wearing a bloody club dress. I daresay the bastards aren't going to slow down for a dance on their way through."

Shepard bristled, lifting her chin. "And you're wearing a nightgown, ma'am, though the pirates won't be napping to death, either. In a situation like this, I'm not sure anyone ought to be judged by their state of undress. We're here to help."

The woman chuckled, the sort of black laugh only borne of stress and the certainty of being in over one's head. Shepard swallowed her own inappropriate burble of dark mirth. "Fair enough, Lieutenant, but—why so few? We radioed for reinforcements as soon as we realized what was happening, and I did not downplay the seriousness of the situation." She gestured broadly, taking in the gate, the barricade, and all her nervous compatriots. Shepard's gaze stuck on the teenaged girl. Too young. And yet she moved with determination, handing something that had once been a chair up to a man higher on the barricade before running back the way she'd come. _Where should she be, Shepard? Walls won't keep her safe if the batarians break through, and there's a real shortage of trees for her to climb and hide in._

Shepard cleared her throat, blinking away the memory, trying not to let the scent of smoke fling her back into a time best forgotten. Here. Now. She wasn't that girl anymore. She had resources. She had skills. "The force is batarian?"

"Force is hardly strong enough a word for what's waiting out there, Lieutenant. There's a bloody _army_ of batarians amassing on the other side of this gate. I thought they'd send _hundreds_ of you. Armed with rocket launchers, preferably."

The thrill of being right was chased swiftly by the shivering chill of knowing she now had to come through; this wasn't a thing that could be done halfway. Brunet was looking at her with a kind of uneasy awe, and he wasn't the only one. A dozen pairs of eyes fixed on her, like she might have answers they didn't. Hell, she wished she did. "We're… not here in response to a call for help, ma'am. Communications are down all over the city. Especially on Alliance channels. We suspect comm hubs were the first target."

The woman grimaced. "My God, I'd like to know how this happened. I daresay someone in Intelligence dropped a rather monumental ball, poor bastard." Confusion creased her brow, and she tilted her head, regarding Shepard with new interest. "Forgive me, you say you're _not_ here in response to our SOS?"

Shepard nodded. "I… guessed, ma'am. That the pirates might take this tactic. I, uh. Had a map. I like to know all the ways into and out of a place."

"Guessed correctly, it seems," Brunet echoed. "Damn, Shepard. They'll give you a Star of Terra for this."

A shudder ran the length of Shepard's spine. "I hope not," she said. "And we need to survive, first. Are you in charge here, ma'am?"

"Rebecca," the older woman said. "Rebecca Milton. I'm afraid I've rather stumbled into leadership, by virtue of being a structural engineer."

Shepard smiled faintly. "That explains why the barricade looks so good, then. I wondered."

"It's leadership I'm happy to share," Rebecca added. "Even if I do rather question your sartorial choices."

Shepard resisted the urge to tug her skirt down, and instead stood to attention as sharply as she'd have done if she were at inspection in front of the Fleet Admiral himself.

"At ease, my girl," Rebecca murmured, an amused half-smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. "It's been a long time since I wore Alliance colors, but I daresay I could muster a report, if you'll have it."

"Thank you, ma'am."

Shepard and Brunet followed as Rebecca Milton showed them around the makeshift little camp. The gate itself was heavily barred, and made of thick metal, but wasn't—Rebecca insisted—shell-proof. Thus far they'd only seen a sapper or two. Only one had made the mistake of coming into range, and Felix (she waved toward a burly, middle-aged man perched near the gate) had winged him with a shot.

"They clearly weren't anticipating a defense of any kind," Rebecca said. "And they're not yet willing to throw their bodies against a wall that fights back." She sighed. "I do rather suspect it's only a matter of time."

"They're not trained to work as a unit," Shepard said. "Pirates might work in small groups, but they're not a unified force. I'd bet just about anything they're suffering from a really bad case of too many cooks in the kitchen out there right now. Storming through in a flood's one thing. Working together to solve a problem is something else entirely, and I don't think they were anticipating that. Which is good for us. If they're fighting with each other, they're not fighting us." Shepard took a deep breath, gathering all the pieces of the puzzle close, trying to imagine the lay of the land like it was a chess game she was walking into part-way. She just had to find a way to win the game. "We have to solve them before they solve us."

Rebecca laughed, a startled little chuckle that seemed to take her aback. "Is that all?"

"Yeah," Shepard said, grinning. "That's it."

"My dear girl," Rebecca mused. "I'll be damned if you don't make me think you can do it."

Shepard sobered instantly. It seemed a lifetime since she'd thrown a powderpuff in Alberts' face, since she'd refused to drink the warm remainder of her beer, and yet a glance at her omni-tool said less than an hour had passed since the first attack. "I'd rather not put civilians in the line of fire, ma'am."

Rebecca shook her head. "You'd best get used to the idea that we're staying. This is our home, and when you live in the Verge, you know what a home's worth. You know what you stand to lose to bastards like these."

"I understand," Shepard said softly, thinking of a laughing mother and a singing father and a girl perched in a tree like a bird with broken wings.

"I believe you do, at that," Rebecca replied.

And then it was all business again. Shepard delegated Brunet to come up with a reasonable rotation of guards. Alberts she sent with one of the locals to try and find shoes for them both. Herder and Schiffler immediately went to relieve the men already manning the gate.

Shepard stood at the base of the barricade looking up into the starlit darkness, imagining the world as a pattern of black and white squares, and trying to dream up the best method to reach check and mate without having to sacrifice any of her pawns.

#

When she was released from the hospital two days later—return to active duty pending physical and mandatory psych evaluations, naturally—they put her in a very nice hotel room, all real wood and fine fabrics in perfectly complementary shades of slate blue and dove grey. It was, she knew, meant to be soothing. Shepard hated it.

Too expensive, for one thing, even though she wasn't footing the bill. Too rich. Too much like the life she'd walked away from on her eighteenth birthday with no intention of ever returning.

Too much space, for another, and no one billeted with her to share it. It felt even lonelier than the private hospital room. No doctors. No Katie Keane. Of course, even if she were back at base, her quarters would've felt lonely. Empty beds. Missing faces. Too many missing faces.

Instead of guns and gear and too many bodies crammed in too small a space, the room smelled only of unobtrusive cleaning products and the light perfume of laundry soap and air freshener. Too floral. It made her nose itch. Hitching her duffel up on her shoulder more snugly, she rubbed at her face with the back of her hand. Even though it was impossible, she imagined her skin still smelled of explosive residue and blood, sharp and hot and coppery. Maybe it always would. Her fingers closed tight around the strap, almost a spasm.

Alberts would probably have gotten a kick out of a room like this. The kid had been so damned excited about _everything_.

_Kid_, Shepard thought, shaking her head. What, a year or two younger than she was now? The same age? She'd never asked. Wouldn't get the chance now. She'd have to read it in her file. Right under the stamp that said KIA.

As soon as the overly polite hotel employee (and the pair of now ever-present Alliance guards) closed the door, Shepard wasted no time drawing the curtains across the indefensibly large windows. Too bright. Her eyes still ached from the blast proximity; the docs said she was damned lucky she'd only given herself a headache and short-term impairment. She didn't feel particularly lucky, but she didn't bother telling them that. She didn't think they'd understand.

One of the bedside lights was on, so even though the room was shrouded in darkness as soon as she dealt with the windows, she could still see the shapes of furniture: scroll-top desk, wardrobe four times bigger than she'd need to hold every scrap of clothing she owned, vidscreen set into the wall, huge four-poster bed lurking like a monster in the middle of the room.

She hated the bed most of all, even though it was just like the one she'd seen in an old picture book of _Sleeping Beauty_ when she was a child and lusted after for years. Not the bed's fault, really. She'd had a four-poster bed in the years between Mindoir and the Alliance, white-draped and too soft. She much preferred hard, narrow cots in the barracks. Or sleeping pods, in all their claustrophobic glory. Floors. She could do floors. With or without blankets, even. This floor seemed nice enough, as floors went. She could do with sleeping on a floor.

When she'd stood alone for several minutes, without even a murmur of voices on the other side of the wall or the faint tick of a clock to break the silence, she finally shifted her gear from her shoulders and lowered it to the floor. The canvas looked even rougher than usual against the soft carpet, the green drab against slate blue and dove grey. For some inexplicable reason it made her want to cry.

But she couldn't. Her tears all burned up when that bomb went off, when she turned to tell Alberts it was over, that they'd held out, that they'd _won,_ and found only a corpse looking back at her.

She sat on the end of the too-soft bed and put her face in her too-rough hands.

_Cry, Shepard. Cry._

But she couldn't. She couldn't.


	5. Chapter 5

Waiting on a battlefield was unlike waiting anywhere else. On the one hand, everyone was safe. Every bullet not fired was someone still alive, still uninjured. On the other, waiting meant the pirates on the other side of the gate could be multiplying with hordes of reinforcements. Hell, they could be waiting for those inevitable reinforcements to show up with rocket launchers or heavy weapons. They could be building a goddamned battering ram; they could be waiting for an air strike that would reduce the little camp to a smoldering ruin and everyone in it to ashes. Truthfully, part of Shepard was surprised that attack hadn't already come. Perhaps the invading force was spread thinner than it had originally seemed; perhaps the Alliance was fighting back harder than anticipated. The thought kept her warm as the first hour trickled into the second, and the second became a third.

The longer it went on, the more the waiting became a kind of Chinese water torture, minute after minute of inaction forming tension so thick it became a weapon itself, winding like thorny vines, pricking at hunched shoulders and scraping at increasingly short-tempered nerves, turning comrades into sharp-tongued antagonists, magnifying small irritations into grotesque and completely unnecessary disputes.

In an effort to combat it, Shepard moved from huddle to huddle, group to group, person to person, and she listened while her people talked. Some spoke confidently of ambitions and dreams. Domarski hoped to rise from the ranks of the enlisted, "Like you, ma'am," he said, with faint awe. Kwan dreamed higher still, of the vaunted N-School; she went on at length about the requirements of ICT, until Schiffler groaned and told her she sounded like a recruitment packet. "A really _boring_ recruitment packet. Only you could make spec ops sound like math class, Kwannie."

Hushed whispers were usually reserved for fears or worries, though Mehra told her a long story about an unrequited love and barely lifted her voice louder than a breath the entire time. From the way her gaze kept flicking to Brunet, Shepard suspected Alliance fraternization regs were no small part of Mehra's reluctance to own her feelings. Shepard tried not to think of Alex Smith. Or Paul Graves, for that matter.

Some spoke of things that had nothing whatsoever to do with war; Shepard found she enjoyed these conversations most of all. They were a potent reminder of what _else_ was out there, and what they were fighting for.

Lieutenant Brunet was a musician. Cello, mostly, though his mom had insisted on piano lessons as a child, and he still played Debussy's_ Claire de Lune_ flawlessly because it was her favorite; he didn't say it in as many words, but Shepard could hear the longing to get _one more chance_ to play in his voice as he spoke.

"I build model ships," Alberts said. "You know, the kind that come in those hobby-store kits? Sometimes I do starships, but my favorite kind are the old Earth tall ships, with real fabric sails and real wood masts and tiny little filaments of thread for rigging." She looked around, laughing at the incredulous faces. "It's my dad's hobby, really. My brothers never took to it, but I like it." She patted the borrowed pistol hanging from a borrowed belt around her waist. "Like this, I guess. They never took to that, either. Anyway. Building ships calms me down. Which is my mom's nice way of saying it shuts me up. Good for concentration. And hell, all that detail work's got to be great for hand-eye coordination. Which probably explains why my pistol skills are better than Shepard's." She grinned, leaning back against her crate as though it were the most comfortable couch in the galaxy, and folded her hands at her waist. "I built a scale model of the _Bounty_ once. Took months. Worth it, though. My parents still have it on their mantel."

"I quilt," rumbled Herder into the silence that followed. Since he was roughly the size of a tank, with hands like dinner plates, a round of amused, dubious laughter followed. He held those big hands wide, marking out a large square. "I make quilts. You know. Sewing."

"He does!" protested Schiffler, rising to her friend's defense when none of the skepticism faded. "Really intricate stuff, too. Patterns you can hardly believe."

"My gram taught me," Herder explained, when Mehra was brave enough to finally ask what they were all thinking: how he'd started. "Spent a lot of time with her, when I was little. She never was much for vids or even books. Liked to do things with her hands. She always said we only get so much time, and we should spend it being useful. So all her hobbies involved making functional things." He shrugged. "That was all a bit heavy for me, but I liked the patterns. Especially the mathematical ones. My favorite quilts are done in fractals."

Of all the Alliance crew, only Corporal Findley didn't want to talk—he was of much more stereotypical and taciturn sniper stock—but he loaned Shepard one of the two rifles he was carrying and said, "Later, when you get us all out of this alive, I'll show you how to mod incendiary ammo of your very own. You're doing fine, kid. You can handle the extra kick."

Somehow that vote of confidence was worth more to her than any of the commendations currently residing in her file.

The camp's divide between military and non-military softened and blurred as the hours passed without the batarians making any move, and eventually some of the civilians stopped by to chat, too. "My pile of crates is your pile of crates," Shepard said, waving Doc Ribiniski onto the seat opposite her. He wasn't quite finished his residency, he admitted, but once, during an emergency on a flight between Elysium and the Citadel, he'd delivered a baby solo. He glanced around uneasily, looking at stomachs as if to make certain he wouldn't be called upon to repeat his feat in the near future. His gaze lingered on the dark-eyed, long-haired teenager currently keeping Mary—ninety if a day, and the unofficial, self-appointed water girl—company. "Her name's Lily," he said. "Her mom's a nurse. I work with her sometimes. On duty tonight, I think." He paused, shaking his head. "She's too young."

_Aren't we all?_ Shepard thought, though she agreed. But surrounded by competent soldiers and safe behind a barricade was, at least for now, better than freezing half-to-death huddled in a tree, waiting for hell.

Rebecca Milton told stories about her days as an Alliance engineer, and bragged a little about how much of her work had gone into Illyria's original planning. "This gate's not mine though," she insisted. "I'd've given it watchtowers at the very least. Perhaps a live-in garrison. Warheads, perhaps."

Shepard tried not to daydream about what she could do with watchtowers and warheads.

Mary led them through half a dozen increasingly maudlin Irish drinking songs, and was impressed when Felix and Kwan already knew most of the words. Shepard knew them too, though she choked up remembering her father's voice singing them, and found she couldn't join in. When they started in on _My Wild Irish Rose, _she excused herself to go sit in silence with Findley.

The watch on the gate changed, and then changed again. Shepard began to hope the batarians, thwarted when they found the gate defended, had changed their tactics. Given up.

She didn't say this aloud, though. No point raising hopes that might be dashed. Shepard didn't talk much at all, except to ask leading questions or share innocent anecdotes related to whatever story she was listening to. She didn't want to burden anyone with the memories tugging at her, whispering in her ear like the proverbial devil on her shoulder. She didn't want to admit that the smell of smoke made her feel sixteen again, or that the thought of looking into a batarian's four-eyed face made her stomach twist with rage so potent she had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming. Listening was better, anyway. Listening was how she learned Kwan and Domarski didn't get along, so she put them on separate rotations, though they'd earlier been paired together. Listening was how she learned Herder preferred rear guard to point, and Mehra didn't feel safe using her biotics unless she had someone with a rifle at her six.

Shepard made note of it all.

Several hours into their vigil, a uniformed runner came from the north, cheeks pink and breath short from exertion. He skidded to a halt before Lieutenant Brunet, saluted, and was about to speak when Brunet shook his head and gestured toward Shepard. The winded serviceman looked skeptical for all the time it took to meet Shepard's eyes and then, while he didn't salute, he did snap to attention.

His news wasn't good. On her omni-tool map, he pointed at the road they'd passed down earlier and insisted it was now blocked by the better part of a fallen building. The attack to the north might have started as a diversion, but it was heated; evidently reinforcements were on their way, but until then, the ground teams were on their own. And they were outnumbered. No one knew how the pirates had managed it, but they'd hit at precisely the most vulnerable time between rotations, with only half the usual Alliance presence stationed in the capital. Command had word that ships were being deployed from Arcturus, but they'd take time to arrive.

Everything took time.

Drip, drip, drip went the water torture.

"I take it that's Command code for 'you're on your own'?" Shepard said it with humor and even found a smile, brief and as bolstering as she could manage. The messenger seemed relieved that she wasn't going to kill him for being the bearer of unpleasant news. She clapped him once on the shoulder and said, "See Mary for some water before you go, Private. Tell Command we'll hold the line."

Mehra, who'd been standing near enough to hear the entire exchange, gave Shepard an uneasy look, her fingers drumming an uneven pattern against her thigh. "Will we?"

Here, Shepard didn't joke. For a second, she forgot that she was only a 2nd lieutenant; she forgot she was wearing a pair of too-small running shoes with no socks, and a too-large borrowed jacket over a dress meant for dancing and not commanding soldiers. She rose to her full height, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin. She said, "Damn straight we will, Mehra. We may be the few, but we're the brave. We're the bold. We've got position, we've got training, and we've got something they don't have. Heart." She gestured widely, taking in the darkened city behind them. "Determination. Pride. This city is full of our people, and they're counting on us to protect them, to keep them safe. We're not going to let them down. We will fight, and we will _hold_, and we will prevail!"

A chorus of enthusiastic cheers followed this declaration. Shepard thought about hushing them, but in that moment they sounded like a hundred voices instead of less than two dozen, and she was okay with letting the batarians on the other side of the gate tremble.

#

The room was small. Table, two chairs. Moderately comfortable, but not too cozy. Just enough space to feel like there was a bit too much space, given how little it contained. White. Of course it was white. Damn if the medical profession didn't _love_ white.

Shepard hated white. Black would be better. Shit-brown with puke-green polka dots would be _better_. She wanted a window. She wanted a cup of coffee. Hell, she wanted to sleep until the whole damned thing blew over, and then she wanted to go back to doing what she did best. Which didn't involve being the center of goddamned attention. No matter what Rear Admiral Hackett said, she knew she fit better in the quiet places, the solitary places; the perch where she could find her perfect shot through the long-range scope, the deep cover reconnaissance mission looking for intel only her skill set could bring back. This? Lights and cameras and endless damned questions? She wasn't cut out for this. She'd had enough of it when she was sixteen and shell-shocked, and it wasn't getting easier with time.

They kept throwing around the word _hero._

If she never heard it again, it would be too soon.

She drove the heels of her hands into her eyes, until she started seeing stars and the pain grounded her. When she lowered her palms, a woman sat on the other side of the table, watching her closely. Too closely. Head-shrinker closely. Shepard swallowed her aggrieved sigh before it could escape. The woman wore a trim charcoal suit over a bright pink silk blouse. Her blonde hair was pulled up in a neat twist. Shepard's mouth curved down at the blonde hair, though it certainly wasn't the woman's fault she bore a passing resemblance to poor, dead Alberts. She'd get over it. She had to get over it. She refused to spend the rest of her life haunted by a ghost with sunshine-colored hair.

Nothing so overt as a white coat in this room, but Shepard knew she was a doctor at once. She'd faced a battalion just like her after Mindoir. She'd sat opposite a grim-faced man who 'only had her best interests at heart' twice a week—Mondays and Thursdays—for the two years she lived with the fosters. She'd joked with Alberts once that she could spot a shrink at a hundred paces. Didn't seem quite so funny, now.

Shepard folded her hands in her lap and lifted her distressed frown into a bland smile. After all those lessons with her dad, all those nights in the mess, she was getting damned good at Skyllian Five. She just had to wait for Doctor Cheerful Pink Shirt to give her a tell she could work with.

"I'm Dr. Winnow." Not a first-name-basis, let's-be-friends doctor, then. Huh. The pink shirt had led her to believe the opposite. Shepard mentally adjusted her tactics. The formal ones were harder, but the challenge wasn't insurmountable. Dr. In Your Best Interests had been the king of formality, and Shepard had managed to slip through the cracks eventually. "How are you feeling today, Lieutenant?" the woman asked politely, her stylus hovering over the interface of her datapad.

"Fine, thank you, ma'am," Shepard replied. "Still a little tired, a little sore, but my breathing's back to normal and they say the abrasions won't even scar."

The doctor's lips compressed slightly. They were painted a bright shade to match the blouse; Alberts would've loved it. Shepard thought it was garish. _Unsightly_. She almost snorted a laugh, but that would've given the doctor too much, so she bit the end of her tongue and choked it down. "I've looked at your file, Lieutenant."

"Of course, ma'am."

"You were a survivor of the attack on Mindoir colony six years ago."

_That old song._

"Yes, ma'am."

The doctor's eyes narrowed. "Would you like to talk about that, Lieutenant?"

What she _wanted_ was to pick up her chair and throw it at one of the windowless walls. Instead, she let herself sit back, unfolding her hands and turning her palms up, as if in surrender. "If you'd like, ma'am."

"That's not what I—" the doctor stopped, mid-protest, and wrote something on her datapad. "We only want to be certain you're okay, Lieutenant Shepard."

"You mean because it was the batarians again," Shepard said, smiling guilelessly. "I'm not sixteen and helpless anymore, Dr. Winnow. I passed all the psych evals when I enlisted, and again when I was tapped for officer training. Batarian slavers remain one of the Alliance's primary concerns, especially here in the Verge. I wouldn't be very effective if I lost my shit every time I came across one."

"Batarians are the reason you lost half your unit back there, Lieutenant. Private Alberts was under your command when she died. That means something. That kind of thing has an effect, no matter how stoic you are."

Shepard bowed her head. A headache throbbed just between her eyes. When she lifted her chin, she found the doctor scribbling away, brow furrowed. "I made a questionable call, and she paid the price. I'm not the first commanding officer to carry that weight, and I won't be the last. I'm not sure what good'll come from talking about it."

"And Commander Kildare? Multiple reports say you nearly shot him."

"I didn't." The words were sharp as the bullets she hadn't used against Kildare. Too sharp. Too revealing.

"No, you didn't."

"I was disoriented, ma'am. I'm told it's to be expected, when you're at the center of a bomb's blast radius."

The doctor lifted shrewd eyes, tapping the end of her stylus against her bright pink lips, and Shepard immediately regretted her snide tone, her loss of control. "Can we talk about the batarian prisoner, Lieutenant?"

Shepard went cold. It was a strange feeling, sudden, like her blood turned to ice water between one breath and the next. Low blow, and yet she should have been expecting it. She didn't know how it had managed to catch her so off-guard. The doctor's expression didn't change at all; Shepard began to wonder if she wasn't the only one treating this little meeting like a particularly cutthroat game of cards. She began to wonder if she wasn't a little outmatched. "That doesn't really sound like the kind of question I'm allowed to answer with a no, ma'am."

"You don't have to talk about it, if you don't want to. You don't have to talk about anything you're not comfortable sharing, Lieutenant."

"Right," Shepard said. "But I do have to talk about it if I want to go back to work. I'm pretty familiar with how this plays out, Doc."

If the doctor was offended by Shepard's foray into informality, she gave no indication of it. She merely set her datapad and stylus to one side, and folded her hands neatly, her gaze never leaving Shepard's. "We're not looking for a reason to discharge you, Lieutenant Shepard. The Alliance needs officers like you. Your actions out there were exemplary."

"Except for what I did to the batarian," Shepard said, spreading her empty hands wide and conceding a kind of defeat in the process. Her mouth twisted at the memory; for a second she imagined she felt the flood of too-hot blood splashing against her cool cheek all over again. "I—I'm not proud of it, if that's what you're worried about."

Dr. Winnow didn't smile, and when she spoke, she didn't sound as though she'd won. She said, "Are you worried about it, Lieutenant?"

"No," Shepard replied without hesitation. "But I don't regret it, either. What I did."

"Ahh," said the doctor, reaching for datapad and stylus once again.


	6. Chapter 6

Another hour ticked by, interminably long, with no movement from the pirates on the other side of the gate. Shepard started falling asleep between blinks, made sure her people were taking appropriate rest breaks, and resolved to take one herself, just as soon as she finished working on Rebecca Milton's malfunctioning radio. She pinched herself hard, and the pain woke her up enough to realize she was hungry, and that the hunger was probably helping the tiredness along.

Lily ran to her apartment and came back with bread and peanut butter and a bag of apples that had seen better days.

"My mom was going to make a pie with them," Lily said, turning wide, apologetic eyes on Shepard. "Sorry there isn't more. It's grocery day tomorrow. If… well."

"It's grocery day tomorrow," Shepard insisted.

She couldn't remember the last time an apple had tasted so good.

When Alberts asked for a rotation, Shepard wanted to deny the request. Alberts wasn't kitted for it; Domarski was up next.

"Come on, Shep," Alberts pleaded. "Sorry, ma'am. _Lieutenant _Shepard_. _If I'd known you were going to make me sit on the sidelines, I really would've gone back to HQ. It's watch duty. We're not engaging hostiles up there. I'll grab Schiffler's flak jacket while she gets some shut-eye. If I'm lucky I'll peg a couple." She smirked. "I think we both know who's the better shot here, officer or no officer."

"I think we both know a challenge when we hear one," Shepard retorted. "You and I have a date with the firing range, Alberts."

Alberts grinned. It made her look strange and feral, with the tracks of makeup still smeared across her skin and the dark kohl smudged around her eyes like bruises. War paint. "Am I getting under your skin? Ma'am?"

"'Course not. Unlike some people, I don't need to brag. I know how good I am."

Alberts had a mean pair of puppy-dog eyes, and she used them now to maximum effect. "I had a nap, I'm more rested than Domarski, I've got good eyes. If I see anything unusual I'll retreat. Just let me do something."

Shepard relented and waved Alberts toward the barricade. The private crossed the distance with a spring in her step, blonde curls bouncing. She threw another bright grin over her shoulder, and Shepard replied with a roll of her eyes before returning to the problem of the radio. If she could just boost the signal, or… or find another frequency, she wanted an update… if they could just get through to—

The shell the batarians used was old, crude, would never have made it past inspection in an Alliance camp. All the better for the attackers; it exploded in a riot of flame. It might not have broken through the gate, but it sent shards of metal heated to tiny burning meteors roaring over the barricade, a grotesque aurora. Shepard heard Alberts scream before she even realized what had happened.

Shepard was the commanding officer; Alberts' puppy-eyes notwithstanding, it was her call.

She made the wrong one.

All hell broke loose. Shepard shouted for backup even as she ran for the gate, unholstering her pistol as she went. Batarians were climbing over the wall, taking advantage of the chaos. Alberts screamed; someone else was crying. Kwan had been the other guard on the gate, but Shepard couldn't see her through the haze of smoke. The scent of seared flesh and fresh blood assaulted Shepard's nostrils, but instead of making her gag, it only hardened her resolve. Doc Ribinski didn't need to be sent for; he was already crouched at Alberts' side, working feverishly to save what remained of the private's mangled leg.

A half-eaten apple dropped from Brunet's hands, replaced by his assault rifle. Someone else was already shooting. Shepard heard the steady slow thump of a sniper rifle being fired. Once, twice. The fleshy thunk of falling bodies followed each shot.

"Shepard!" Herder shouted, his voice ringing across the battlefield as clearly as if he were speaking directly into her ear. "Down!"

Shepard dropped without hesitating, scraping all the skin from her bare knees, and came up in a crouch. The whizz of a bullet screamed over her, exactly where her unprotected head had been a moment earlier. Peering through the smoke, half a dozen dead batarians already lay at the base of the barricade, but she didn't see any still Alliance personnel amongst them. Herder's shotgun blasted; another body fell.

She waited a heartbeat, then two, before rising again and weaving toward the gate. Had it been a minute? Two? Her people were already forming lines, falling back on training in spite of the suddenness of the attack. The batarian assault seemed impossibly disorganized in comparison, and their people paid the price.

It wasn't a full-scale attack. Couldn't be. She lifted her borrowed gun, aimed, and one of the batarians climbing over the wall fell backward. Shepard suspected the bomb they'd used hadn't entirely done what it was meant to do; they'd probably been counting on the gate blowing open. Instead, it was merely dented inward, and Rebecca's barricade still stood strong, though it smoldered in a couple of places. Crouching behind one of the piles of crates she'd earlier spent as a makeshift living room, Shepard fiddled with her omni-tool, calling up the program she'd spent the last month working on in her off-hours.

The _theory_ was all good, but she'd never actually tested out the incinerating plasma round in _practice._

No time like the present to take horrible, possibly life-threatening risks with tech.

On the count of three, she stood, aimed, and flung out her arm. The heat was intense, and she smelled burned hair as the blowback singed her brows and the wisps of hair around her face. The contained little fireball flew unerringly, throwing two batarians backward over the wall, and sending a third careening forward to land with a thump on the bodies of his dead colleagues. "Capture that one!" she shouted. "Keep him alive!"

The combined effort of Mehra's biotic throws and Findley's slow shots that never missed and the explosive bursts of Herder's shotgun blasts, as well as a couple of Shepard's incinerating plasma rounds, and the exchange was over almost as soon as it had begun.

Not without casualties. She saw Kwan now, crumpled where she'd fallen, dreams of N-School dashed. Shepard's gut twisted. Two dozen batarians for one of hers was still too high a price to pay.

"You're bleeding," Rebecca Milton said. "And I think you've burned your cheek."

"I'm fine," Shepard said. "It's skin. And—" Shepard glanced over her shoulder. Alberts writhed under Doc Ribinski's ministrations, biting down hard on a balled up rag to keep from screaming. Shepard's chest ached to look at her; she'd never wanted to see anyone pass out more. But Alberts clenched her hands into fists and beat them against the ground and did not fall under. "They're wounds that'll keep. I want you to pull the civilians away from the wall. Herder and Mehra will watch over them. I mean it, Rebecca." He gaze shifted, glancing over Kwan's fallen form. "Soldiers sign up for this, knowing what the risks are. I can't lose your people. I _won't_ lose your people. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," Rebecca said softly.

"Bring me the batarian," Shepard ordered, her voice cracking out like a whip. Domarski jumped to attention, dragging the batarian, whose arms had been bound with what looked like the belt of Rebecca's trenchcoat. "You, Lieutenant Brunet. And Corporal Findley. Everyone else stay out here, stay alert, and shout if anything changes at the goddamned gate."

"But, Lieutenant," Domarski protested. "I'm the one who—"

"The gate, Domarski, and that's an order." She turned sharp eyes on Brunet, who immediately stepped up to take Domarski's place as guard. "Over there, away from the rest. I don't want a fucking audience for this."

#

The paper, creamy and blank, judged her as she tapped the end of her borrowed pen against the desk, defying her to find the right words, to voice sentiments that wouldn't sound trite. Eight crumpled pieces littered the floor around her, testament to her earlier failures.

It wasn't something she _had_ to do; someone higher up the chain of command had doubtless already sent the official message, and the bland condolences that went with it.

She couldn't stop thinking about that model of the _Bounty_, sailing boldly across the top of Alberts' parents' fireplace, real cloth sails filled with imaginary wind, real thread rigging manned by invisible sailors. Her own fingers itched to be doing something, anything. To be useful. She picked up her pen again. It was nice, for a hotel pen. When she wrote _Dear Mr. And Mrs. Alberts_ at the top of blank page number nine, the ink didn't smear or blot.

The pen, however, did not magically hand her the words she needed, wanted.

She paused, uncertain. In earlier drafts, she'd tried saying things like _Private Alberts was a credit to the uniform_ or _Emma was a friend_ or _your daughter was very brave_ and none of them sounded right. Alberts wasn't _Alberts_ to them, and Shepard couldn't shake the sinking feeling that if she'd been a little _less_ friendly with her insubordinate, maybe Alberts would've done a better job of surviving. Shepard wouldn't have been taken in by the grin and the teasing and the puppy-dog eyes.

_I'm sorry,_ she wrote.

Setting the pen down, she put her head in her hands, staring unblinking at the pair of words until her eyes burned.

It was true, but it wasn't right either.

When the page remained stubbornly blank, she pushed herself back from the desk. The legs of her chair caught the edge of the rich carpet and the fabric bunched until she nearly tripped over it. Scowling, she kicked one of the pieces of paper away instead of throwing the chair. Dr. Winnow would be so proud. Or not. Dr. Winnow would probably have things to say about sublimation and transference and anger management.

Shepard sighed, pushing her hands through her hair and dragging it up into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. She peered into the mirror over the vanity and a tired version of herself peered back. Dr. Winnow would probably also have things to say about how little sleep she was getting, and how troubled by nightmares that occasional rest was.

All in all, she was quite glad she didn't have to speak to Dr. Winnow today, really, but her room felt too dark, too constricting. Too much like a very well-appointed prison. Her omni-tool pinged. She took one look at the message, its sender, and the subject _We're So Proud Of You_ and deleted it unopened. Some people didn't learn.

The annoyance of this intrusion by her foster whatever-they-weres—not family, never family—put a sour taste in her mouth and sent her stalking toward the door. When she flung it open, the pair of Alliance guards outside—Kerry and Sherwood today, doubtless to be replaced with Mathers and Chen on the second shift—waited in the hall. They shared a look and Sherwood evidently drew the short straw. "Ma'am? Can I get you something?"

"Am I allowed to leave?"

Sherwood blinked at her, momentarily stunned into silence, and then his gaze slipped sideways to meet Kerry's again. Kerry frowned, but didn't speak. When Sherwood found his voice, it was a little higher than she remembered. "Ma'am, you're not a _prisoner_."

_Aren't I?_ "Then I'm allowed to go out?"

His posture remained perfectly correct, all attention and professionalism, but his expression shifted enough toward uneasiness that she answered for him, "I'm _allowed_, but they'd really prefer I stayed here?"

"There's a lot of press out there, ma'am."

"Still?"

Sherwood nodded. "They keep hoping you'll relent and give them the interview they want."

Shepard made a face. "I'd rather not even give them a no comment. Rear Admiral Hackett's calling the shots with appearances. We'll take a cab. And go out the back entrance. And not tell anyone."

"Ma'am?"

"You served on Elysium long, Private Sherwood?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good," she said. "You can come with me, then. I need a guide."

He swallowed and cast a strained look around, as if hoping for reinforcements to arrive and save him. None did. "I have to come anyway, Lieutenant Shepard. Uh. You know. It's part of guard duty? Guarding?"

Shepard tilted a faint, wry smile his way, and leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms over her chest. "You honestly think I couldn't break out of this place if I wanted, Sherwood? Have you seen the size of the damned window in there? Not to mention there's at least one duct in the ceiling I know I could crawl through, and I'm pretty sure I could blow up the bathroom floor if I really needed a tertiary escape route."

Kerry snorted a laugh, and immediately covered it with a cough. Sherwood looked pained. "I take your point, ma'am. Thank you for, uh, not going out through the bathroom floor."

Fifteen minutes later, she and Sherwood were huddled in the back of a cab, with Kerry still standing guard in front of the door to an empty hotel room. Sherwood shrugged out of the bellboy's jacket she'd made him wear and folded it neatly over his arm. She wore civvies instead of anything remotely like a uniform and had left her hair loose under a concealing ball-cap; it was up in all the pictures the vids kept showing. No skin-tight green dresses this time; just jeans and a t-shirt, plain as she owned. Still, as they walked into the little hobby shop on the far side of town, it took exactly thirty-five seconds before a pig-tailed little girl looked up at her, tugged on her mother's hand, and said, "Mama, it's the lady from the vids."

Shepard pretended not to hear and strode instead to the wall of models. They were all starships here, nary an old-Earth tall ship to be found. She didn't know why she'd been expecting the _Bounty_, but she found herself disconsolately disappointed.

"But, Mama," the kid cried at the end of the aisle, "the vid-lady's here. I'm not lying. I'm not even lying, she's right _there._"

Sherwood slid her an uneasy look and Shepard reached for the box at eye-level, a complicated-looking turian dreadnought. The level said _advanced_, but she didn't care. She was good with fiddly things. God help her if she couldn't figure out a stupid starship model. The kid's mother hissed an admonishment in an effort to stop what looked to be the start of an epic temper tantrum, and Shepard sighed.

"Hey," she said, removing her cap and flicking her hair back over her shoulders. In her peripheral vision she saw the mother's eyes widen, and her lips part in an 'o' of silent surprise. "It's okay. You're right; I'm the lady from the vids."

"I heard you were, like, a _superhero._"

"Nah," she said, crouching down to the little girl's level, gesturing to take in her appearance. "No mask, no cape."

"Can you fly?"

Shepard laughed the first genuine laugh since… everything, and shook her head. The smile felt good. It felt like a weight being lifted. "I wish. I can run pretty fast, but only because I work at it really hard."

"I can run really fast, too. I raced my brother and he's bigger than me and I still won." The girl narrowed her eyes and scrunched up her nose. "We can race if you want."

"She—the Lieutenant—oh God, honey, she doesn't want to _race_."

"You'd beat me," Shepard added, clapping a hand to the side of her leg. "I hurt myself. Still getting better. Not very good for racing."

"Oh," said the little girl. "I have a big bruise from falling off the bed, wanna see?"

The girl's mother made a strangled noise in the back of her throat, throwing Shepard a desperate and apologetic look, but her daughter was already pulling down her knee-sock to show a truly prodigious bruise. Shepard oohed over it accordingly, and the girl grinned, immensely proud.

"Well," Shepard said, when the bruise was safely covered by sock once more, "I should go."

"Are you gonna make that spaceship?"

"Yeah," Shepard said. "I'm going to try."

"Mama, can I make a spaceship?"

"Maybe you'll get one for your birthday," the girl's mother said. Then her eyes met Shepard's and almost instantly filled with the sheen of tears. "Uh. Thank you. More than I can say. Thank you."

Shepard shrugged it off, and settled her cap on the little girl's pig-tailed head. "You keep that safe for me, okay?"

The girl nodded, one hand reaching up to touch the brim like it was as magical as that cape and mask Shepard most certainly didn't have.

When Shepard placed her box of turian dreadnought on the counter, the man behind it shook his head and said, "This one's on me."

Shepard frowned, but he pushed her credit chit back to her, slid the box into the bag, and turned away, flipping through screens of inventory on his console like they held all the secrets of the universe. He didn't stare. He didn't thank her. In that instant she could've hugged him, if there weren't a counter between them. Instead, she headed for the door, still trailed by a mildly-baffled Private Sherwood.

She still didn't know what, exactly, to say to Alberts' parents, but, fueled by kindness and a child's wide-eyed wonder, she found she was ready to give it another try.


	7. Chapter 7

Shepard told herself the chill as she turned and faced the batarian was only the effect of the night air. Any uneasiness she might have felt was assuaged somewhat by the prisoner's belligerent posture. Even bound as he was, even flanked by Alliance guards, he met her gaze unflinchingly, his expression an open dare to do her best. And fail.

She asked, "How many people do you have on the other side of that gate?"

"Ten," the batarian tilted his head to the right, showing the side of his neck like a sneer. "A hundred. A thousand. Why should I tell you? I do not talk to chattel."

Shepard arched an eyebrow and leaned against an obliging wall, crossing her arms over her chest. "Out of curiosity, are you as familiar with human body language as I am with batarian?" she asked, as casually as she might've conversed about the weather. Then she turned her head and spit.

"Vulgar," the batarian said. "I would not expect otherwise from a human."

"How many people do you have on the other side of that gate?"

The batarian said nothing.

Lazily, she pushed herself away from the wall and lifted her pistol, turning it over in her hands.

"Your pathetic posturing betrays your weakn—"

Shepard shot him in the leg. Not enough to blow the bone to shards, not enough to incapacitate him with pain, not even enough to cause permanent damage, but perfectly aimed so the round grazed the flesh of his upper thigh, filling the air with the scent of blood and burning flesh. To his credit—and her annoyance—the batarian didn't scream. He bucked against the arms holding him and hissed, all four of his eyes glaring at her with the kind of unmistakable hate that didn't require translation.

Fair enough. The feeling was mutual.

Brunet, on the other hand, went pale. He glanced down at his own leg, as if making certain her shot hadn't missed and struck him instead.

She ignored him—it would take a hell of a distraction to make her miss such an easy shot at short range—and, still calm, still implacable, she repeated, "How many people do you have on the other side of that gate?"

The batarian snarled a series of expletives her translator glitched on and bared his teeth. She bent close enough to smell the stink of him, feel the heat of his panting breath against her cheek, and said, "But you don't give a shit about your leg, do you? You knew you were a dead man the second you fell from the wall. It's easy to be brave when you're a dead man. So maybe I don't kill you." She echoed his expression, baring her own teeth, but in a kind of feral smile. "There are worse things than dying."

"You can do nothing to me, human. Kill me or don't. I will not speak. And before morning, you will be dead, so it will hardly matter."

Without warning, Shepard brought her elbow up, hard and sharp and precise as a surgeon making a cut. The bone beneath the batarian's lower right eye made a terrible sound as it broke under the force of her blow. This time the batarian did cry out, a soft gasp caught somewhere between surprise and pain. And maybe a little fear. Good. His cheek was misshapen when she stepped back, and his lower eye nearly swollen shut. "I thought I heard something about eyes being important to you," Shepard said mildly, ignoring the ache in her arm. "Can you live with three eyes, the way my friend will have to live with one leg? Can you live with two? With one? If I pluck out every one of your eyes, will your gods turn their backs on you, batarian? Will whatever passes for your soul stay trapped in that body as it rots?"

"Superstition." The batarian wasn't able to keep the quaver from his voice. A trickle of blood slipped down his chin.

"Then you won't care if I hit you again, but aim my elbow an inch higher." She drew her arm back as if to strike once again, and was gratified when the batarian twisted away.

"Lieutenant," Brunet pleaded softly. "He's a prisoner of war."

"Are you questioning me, Brunet?"

He paused, the silence carrying more than it's share of weight. "No, ma'am."

_Too bad,_ she thought. _I am._

The batarian turned his head, spitting out a dark glob of blood. "I believe I will have fun breaking you, the way I have broken so many others of your kind," he said. "I like to break the ones who fight back. And when you are broken, the credits I make from selling you to the highest bidder will keep me in—"

He didn't finish. Shepard raised her pistol, and a moment later his face imploded. She was standing near enough that blood sprayed against her cheek. It was as hot as the rest of her skin was cold.

She dropped the gun even though all her training screamed _never drop your weapon, soldier; a good soldier never drops her weapon,_ turning away from the falling body, her stomach already rebelling. It didn't take long to empty out the remains of the little meal—apple, bread, peanut butter—Lily had brought her earlier. A lifetime ago. Before Alberts, before Kwan, before _this_.

Shepard dragged the back of her hand across her mouth and wiped the spittle and bile on the stained skirt of her dress. "Get rid of it," she said, her voice breaking on the final syllable. Hardly the picture of control and leadership she wanted to present, but there was little to be done now. "Away from the gate. The—it's bad enough out there. We don't have to add to it."

_I don't have to add to it._

"Yes, ma'am," Brunet said. He didn't look down at the body as he hooked his hands beneath the batarian's armpits and began to tug. He didn't look at her, either. Perhaps he wasn't going to question, but he wasn't approving either. Not that she blamed him. Not that she wanted him to approve. Her stomach twisted again, though there was nothing left within it to bring up.

Corporal Findley remained, silent. She wondered if he was meant to support or guard her. She wasn't certain which she preferred. After a moment, he bent and retrieved the fallen pistol, offering it back to her handle-first.

"The bastard was asking for it," Findley said. "You know it. I do. LT knows." He gestured, urging her to reclaim the weapon. She didn't. "Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it good. But I think you know that."

One at a time, she curled her fingers toward her palm and then wrapped her thumb tight around them to make a fist. "Petty vengeance," she said. "It was weak. And I—I didn't even _get_ anything. It was all… it was all for _nothing._"

She resisted flinching away from his bald scrutiny, but only barely. Her cheeks burned beneath the blood. After a moment, he asked, "Colony kid?"

"Mindoir," she replied.

Findley nodded, hmming sympathetically. "Think you got it out of your system?"

She uncurled her fingers as carefully as she'd curled them, imagining she could still feel the kick of the pistol's recoil in her bones, though she knew it was only a phantom sensation, nothing real. "I didn't know it was _in_ my system. How can I know if it's out?"

"That you're asking's probably a good sign." Findley sighed, his gaze slipping sideways to the pool of the batarian's blood. "Usually the threat's enough, and you can scare 'em into talking just by using the right words at the right time. Not with that bastard. You could've followed through and taken one eye at a time and he'd still have been mocking you all the way to hell as his four-eyed friends stormed the gate behind us. Sometimes you can't break 'em. I think he was one of those."

Shepard stared at the gun Findley still held toward her. His hand didn't shake. She couldn't bring herself to lift her own to take the weapon back. "Doesn't matter," she said. "I shouldn't—I should never have stooped to his level."

"It's ugly business," Findley agreed. Then he cocked his head slightly—not insulting, like the batarian, but thoughtful. "Everyone looks in the mirror and sees the Devil looking back at least once, Shepard. If you like what you see, maybe you get out. Maybe you never touch a gun again. Maybe you take up knitting or cooking or growing those tiny Japanese trees, or some shit where there're no blurred lines between what you can do and what you should do." He shrugged, though the hand holding out the gun still remained steady. "But if you want the truth, kid? I'm not worried about you." He tapped the rifle still holstered on his back. "You learn a lot about people, looking through scopes and listening while they talk. You're not the kind who falls in love with the Devil. I'm pretty damned sure of that."

She didn't feel better. The batarian's blood caking on her face prevented it. But she didn't feel worse, either. Reaching out, she closed her hand around the butt of the pistol, just in time for Domarski to come skidding around the corner with news that the pirates were launching another attack.

#

Shepard dressed slowly, carefully, drawing each garment onto her body with the kind of care and attention she usually reserved for arming herself, when she knew attentiveness meant the difference between life and death. Her dress uniform was a little loose; as she slipped her arms into the sleeves, the jacket hung from her shoulders differently than it had on last wearing, and she definitely cinched her belt a notch tighter than usual.

She knew it didn't smell like smoke, not really, but for some reason she couldn't shake the strange hallucination that it did. She brushed her hands down the front of her jacket, and then smoothed the fabric over her hips. Someone armed with more paints and pots and brushes than she'd known could exist in one makeup kit had come earlier, buffing away every hint of weariness and worry, providing expert camouflage. Better than the uniform, even. Even now, when Shepard bent at the waist and peered into the mirror, she saw only a girl who looked too young to have earned the honor they were preparing to bestow on her. Put-together, though. Well-rested. Polite lies. She tried on a smile. It looked vaguely pained. All the lipstick in the world couldn't stop that, she supposed.

Rear Admiral Hackett arrived to guide her through the throng of press. She blinked at the bright lights and tried to make out the garbled, shouted questions with little success. She hoped she didn't look as much like a deer caught in the headlights as she felt. The rear admiral said a few words. Shepard could hardly make them out over the din. She kept smiling, because Rear Admiral Hackett had asked her to.

Her hands were cold, and beneath the crisp blue of her uniform, her heart raced, thudding against her ribcage like a drum played by a madman.

She thought about Corporal Findley, telling her to grow bonsai trees if she started to love the dark too much. She thought about Alberts, laughing as she caked on yet another coat of mascara.

She thought about the little girl in the hobby shop asking if she was a superhero.

It was this image she held onto, not because it made her feel like the hero they all wanted her to be, but because that little girl with her grin and her pigtails and her bruised leg from falling out of bed was the reason Shepard fought. Honors or no honors. Recognition or no recognition. To the death, if she had to. For years, she'd been fighting for the terrified teenager trapped in a tree, smelling her town burn, seeing her dead parents on the backs of her eyelids. For years, she'd been running away from Mindoir, always looking backward, afraid of what was chasing her, afraid of what would happen if it caught up.

_I'm not the kind who falls in love with the Devil_. _And I'm not the girl in the tree anymore, either._

Her heartbeat slowed and her smile widened, and when she took a deep breath Shepard smelled only fresh air and the hint of coming rain, and the cool breeze on her cheek felt like a caress, like a promise of better things to come. And for the first time since she wobbled to her feet in the blasted-out bar, blood dripping down her face and memories of Mindoir burning in her brain, she believed it.

_You're doing fine, kid,_ she told herself, lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders, looking ahead._ You can handle the extra kick._


	8. Chapter 8

Alberts was whimpering.

Marine or not, training or not, a battlefield amputation was always going to be hell. A battlefield amputation with no sedatives, limited medi-gel, and a nervous civilian doctor not quite finished his training probably deserved a few tears. Hadn't they all been laughing and drinking and raising their glasses in increasingly raucous and maudlin toasts just hours ago? To their favorite guns. To ships and planets they'd served on, trained on. To comrades. To the Alliance. To hopes and dreams and always having a cold beer waiting at the end of a long day.

Now Alberts would never walk without assistance again, the batarians were throwing everything they had at an increasingly desperate defense, and they were fighting for their damned lives. The quiet period between exploding bar and exploding gate seemed a thousand lifetimes ago; it belonged to a different woman, a different soldier.

Shepard felt for Alberts. Hard not to. But the private had enlisted. She'd volunteered. She'd known what she was getting herself into. And understandable as it was, the noise was distracting as hell. Demoralizing, too. It played a strange, upsetting counterpoint to the heavy thump of whatever crude shells the batarians were using to attempt to break the defenses. Nothing so dire as that first explosive mess, but the persistence was troubling. The batarian reinforcements, it appeared, had arrived. Theirs had not. Shepard pressed her fingers tight to her throbbing temples and paced. The sounds followed her.

Shepard knew the Alliance had to be on their way. It had been hours. The reports were infrequent, but Elysium wasn't a backwater colony in the middle of nowhere. It was _Elysium. _It was important. The Alliance wasn't going to let the oldest human colony on the Skyllian Verge fall to a bunch of raiders.

Dammit, _Shepard_ wasn't going to let the oldest human colony in the Skyllian Verge fall to a bunch of raiders. She'd be damned if a bunch of batarian bastards were going cart off Elysian civilians the same way they'd stolen and slaughtered the people of Mindoir. Not on her watch.

She'd been helpless then. Now she wasn't.

They'd already lost too many in the initial onslaught. _Graves. Kho. Masaka. Both Smiths. Kwan._ Too many civilians whose names she didn't know and couldn't add to her running memorial list. None here, yet, thank God, but attack after attack, foray after foray, feint after feint, she couldn't help wondering whom she might lose first. Rebecca Milton? Felix, who refused to behave like a civilian and insisted on holding the line with the others? Mary?

She lifted her gaze and was met with the sight of Lily, eyes glimmering with unshed tears, helping Mary offer water to the wounded. Herder had taken a hit in his dominant arm, and had merely switched the grip to his off-hand and killed the bastard who'd hit him before letting Doc Ribinski sew him up. Schiffler'd fallen hard and hit her head, and Shepard didn't need the doctor's opinion to know she was pretty severely concussed. They'd covered Kwan with a sheet. Shepard didn't look too long at it, and she didn't think about the batarian she'd—

Shaking her head, she waved Lily over.

The girl's hair was the wrong color and her eyes dark instead of grey, but the age was about right. Shepard wished she'd been half as brave on Mindoir as Lily was being here.

_You're not that coward anymore._

"Hey," Shepard said, motioning Lily over. "You should be somewhere safer. With your family. You could hole up in your apartment until all this blows over."

Lily's expression was mixed of equal parts terror and resolve. Determination won. The girl's chin took on a defiant tilt. "I can help. My mom's a nurse."

"It's dangerous."

"Everywhere's dangerous. And I can help."

Shepard clapped a hand to a too-thin shoulder, and the girl inflated under the attention. "You know how to shoot?"

"A little," she said, clearly lying.

Shepard flipped the small sidearm pistol out of the borrowed holster at her hip and offered it grip-first. Kwan's gun. She tried not to linger on the thought. Lily's slim fingers trembled as they took the weapon, but the girl didn't flinch, didn't grip too hard, and held the gun at almost the right angle. "Don't you need it?"

Shepard patted the heavier pistol on her other hip, cocked a thumb at the sniper rifle slung over her back, and shook her head. "Extras. Look, something comes at you, pull the trigger. Got it? Try not to think. Thinking takes too much time. Just do. Batarians have a lot of eyes. Aim for one of them."

The girl's brow furrowed in confusion and she glanced around the room. It made her look even younger, and Shepard glanced away. "Why me, though?"

Shepard said, "Just don't hesitate. Now, can you bring Alberts something to drink?"

Lily didn't move at once. Her dark eyes, already too old, already seeing too much, lingered a moment longer on Shepard's face. Then she nodded. Firmly.

Screw half. Shepard wished she'd been a _quarter_ so brave.

The rhythmic sound of shelling grew louder. Too loud.

"They're going to break through," Alberts gasped, ignoring the water, hands clenching and unclenching around her uninjured thigh as though she already imagined losing it. "We have to fall back. We… we can't hold this position, Shepard."

"We can," Shepard said. "We can and we _will._" Glancing around, she took in the terrified, pale faces. The marines watched her calmly, waiting for orders. It occurred to her, just for a moment, to wonder why they—even Brunet, even Rebecca Milton, with years and years more experience between them—were looking to _her_, and then the moment passed and she said, "We can't protect the whole damned planet, but we can protect this spot on it. The Alliance is coming. We know the Alliance is coming. All we need to do is hold the line. They'll come for us."

"How?"

Shepard didn't see who asked the question. It didn't matter. Not really. "I need every bit of metal we can muster. Cutlery. Nails. Jewelry. Anything. Think shrapnel." She looked to the marines. "And I need your grenades. Anything explosive. Fuel, if you can find it."

"But—" Alberts began.

"They _are_ going to break through," Shepard said. "But they're in for a hell of a surprise when they do."

A little of the terror on the expectant faces was replaced by hope. Shepard straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and gave her people, military and civilian alike, a bolstering smile. Then she saluted them, her proud, brave warriors, her last line of defense. "We can do this."

_I can do this._

Lily nodded first, and scurried away to find what metal she could, pistol still clutched protectively in one hand.

The batarians were going to rue the goddamned day.

Brunet was the one to approach with the supplies the defense scavenged. He crouched beside her, settling the various military-grade incendiary devices in careful rows and placing a couple of pillowcases full of metal next to them. Shepard wasted no time, gathering several of the grenades and pulling up her omni-tool interface. Bombs weren't hard. Crude bombs were _easy_. Terrorists managed them all the damned time. But Shepard didn't want something crude. She didn't want something whose blast radius would take her and the civilians under her care out along with the batarians.

She didn't want this to be a suicide mission.

"I'd like to volunteer," Brunet said.

Shepard finished stripping a wire before raising her eyes to meet his concerned gaze. "For?"

His lips turned down in a frown even more heavy with concern than his brow. "To set the charges. To make sure the thing goes off."

"No," she said.

He blinked at her as though he didn't understand the word.

"My bomb," she said, wiggling the stripped wire in front of his baffled face. "My tech. My failure, if it doesn't work." She smiled faintly. "I appreciate the offer, Lieutenant, but this one's on me."

"I could order you. Lieutenant."

"Sure," she replied, pausing to consider the best method for maximum damage. The frag grenades were one thing, but the inferno grenades… they had real potential. "But you already publicly deferred the command to me, sir. Taking it back now might do irreparable damage to company morale, and the civilians will just be confused."

He pushed a hand back through his hair, and with the aggrieved expression and the dark shadows beneath his eyes, he suddenly looked decades older than his years. She wondered if she did, too. Better not to know, really. "Shepard," he pleaded. "You're not even in a hardsuit. You've got no shields if something goes wrong. Command's going to have my fucking head as it is, with what happened to Alberts. And… the… that other thing."

"Lieutenant Brunet," Shepard said quietly, "this crazy scheme's been on me from the beginning. All of it. You and your people would be on the front line now, if you hadn't run into me." She shrugged, holding grenades in her two hands. "I'd have less firepower. We probably wouldn't have survived that first sortie. But the responsibility is mine. I'll make sure Command knows."

He ran his hands down cheeks dark with five o'clock shadow. "That's not how chain of command works, and we both know it. You don't have to be a hero."

"Heroics have nothing to do with it. I'm building the damned bomb; I'm going to be the one to make sure it does what it's supposed to, and to pay the price if the whole thing backfires. Literally." She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "You can hit me over the head, Lieutenant, but unless I'm unconscious? I'm not letting anyone else carry the weight of this."

He sighed. "I could, you know. Knock you out."

She laughed, a single harsh chuckle. "You could. But Findley likes me better than he likes you, and I think he might shoot you between the eyes if you did." She set one of her grenades down carefully and patted Brunet lightly on the knee. "It'll be okay, Brunet. I've got this. Your job is to get everyone else the hell _out. _I'm counting on you. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said, but he looked at her the way someone looked at a corpse laid out in a coffin, and she couldn't pretend the shiver that ran the length of her spine was from the cold.

#

After the ceremony, with the heavy Star of Terra on its ribbon, its weight a personal albatross around her neck; after the party, where she smiled and conversed and sipped at a single glass of champagne, all the while wishing instead to be in a bar with Brunet and Rebecca Milton and her team of survivors; after Rear Admiral Hackett thanked her for her dedication and her service and, silently she imagined, for not whistleblowing the politics that had led to the award being bestowed in the first place, Shepard returned to her hotel, hopefully for the last time. She was ready to get back to work, back to her life, back to narrow beds and the sound of snoring bunkmates. Chen, her guard of the moment, didn't talk to her, and Shepard could've kissed the woman for her silence.

Sherwood, looking a great deal more excited than he'd looked earlier, when he'd been told he'd be missing the ceremony in order to stand guard over an empty room—evidently the Alliance was concerned no batarian agent be allowed to infiltrate and make a mess of their excellent fiction by killing the resident hero—greeted her with wide eyes and a lowered voice. "You have a visitor, ma'am." He grinned brightly. "It's Staff Commander Anderson. He's _N7_, ma'am. Not just any N7, either. Graduated in the first N7 class. Rear Admiral Grissom himself _personally_ congratulated—"

Shepard chuckled, and Sherwood ducked his head, abashed. "I looked him up on my omni-tool, ma'am."

"You don't say." She clapped Sherwood on the arm and reached for the door. "Suppose I should see what my illustrious guest is here for."

"Probably to congratulate _you_, Lieutenant Shepard."

"Hell, I hope not," she said, closing the door before Sherwood could utter the inevitable protest.

Commander Anderson had pulled the curtains open for the first time since she'd initially shut them, and he stood gazing out, hands linked behind his back, the sun shining on his face. She blinked at the brightness, and saluted smartly. He turned, smiled. "At ease, Lieutenant. Imagine you've had quite enough pomp and circumstance for one day. I'm Commander Anderson."

"So I've been informed, sir. Private Sherwood is… a fan."

The commander laughed softly, shaking his head and moving away from the window. He left the curtain open, and gestured for Shepard to join him in the little sitting area. Once they were seated, he leaned back and cast a speculative look her way. "So, Lieutenant. You avoiding my messages, or just not getting them?"

She lifted her brows, too startled to hide her surprise.

"Ahh. Not getting them. Makes sense. They've probably got three techs and a week's backlog on your address right now, what with all the congratulations pouring in. And death threats. Not to mention the spam."

"I'm sorry, sir?"

"You're a story from here to Earth, and probably halfway to the Terminus, too. Makes sense you're inundated."

She swallowed and sat up stiffly in her chair, back straight. "May I ask why you're here, sir? Are you from Internal Naval Affairs?"

He frowned. "You mean the business with the batarian prisoner? No, Lieutenant. I'm afraid that's a sin you'll have to carry on your own. I believe the record of it will be expunged. Doesn't match with the picture of the hero they've so lovingly created. Good story. Hardly anyone's asking the really hard, really ugly questions about what went down and why we weren't here in time to prevent it."

"I'm not a hero," she insisted.

Anderson's dark gaze narrowed. He leaned forward a little, resting his elbows on his thighs and watching her above his folded hands. She waited for him to feed her the Alliance party line. Instead, he said, "Who is? Doesn't change the way you'll be seen from here on out." With his chin, he gestured toward the medal hanging around her neck. "Aspire to it. Hell, grow into it." He paused, the kind of measuring silence that made her dread the inevitable question. "Tell me something, Lieutenant. Why didn't you go back to base?"

She bowed her head. "It's in my report, sir."

"I know it's in your report. I want to hear it in your own words."

She wondered if glaring at a superior officer was enough to warrant a court-martial. Maybe if she glared hard enough. "I didn't think there was time. Sir."

"You didn't follow protocol."

"That's in my report, too. I… I know it sounds unprofessional, but my gut told me the gate would be important. Comms were down. I didn't want to let them surge in uncontested. I didn't think anyone else would get there if I didn't go myself."

"And you're not a hero."

Definitely a court-martial-worthy glare. "No, sir."

"Maybe not, Shepard. Maybe not. But you've got special forces written all over you. I'm here to invite you to the villa, Lieutenant Shepard. You're exactly the kind of officer Interplanetary Combatives Training wants."

"No, thank you, sir."

"The next course starts—excuse me? No, thank you?"

She wasn't sure she'd ever witnessed anyone actually scratch their head in confusion before, but Commander Anderson did it now, sitting back in his seat with a solid thump, his expression so genuinely baffled she almost wanted to apologize. She didn't.

"Explain yourself, Lieutenant."

She lifted her chin. Not defiantly, this time, but not cowed, either. "It would be an honor to train at the Academy." She lifted a hand to touch the medal she wore. "You told me to grow into it. I'm asking for a little time, sir. To grow."

"You don't think you'll grow in ICT?"

"I know I would." She grimaced. "But I don't want it connected to, to this. I don't want one to look related to the other."

"You know there's no guarantee you'll be asked a second time?"

She nodded. "It's a risk I'm willing to take."

The corner of Anderson's mouth turned up; she almost thought he seemed pleased, though that didn't make sense at all. "The willingness to take risks doesn't seem to be something you lack, Lieutenant Shepard." He pushed himself to his feet. "I imagine we'll speak again soon enough."

"I hope so, sir."

She saluted again, hoping, as the door closed behind him, that she hadn't just made the biggest mistake of her life.

Somehow, though, as she walked to the window and let the sunlight bathe her face in springtime warmth, somehow it felt more like a beginning than an end.


End file.
